STONE TEMPLE PILOTS members Robert DeLeo (bass), Dean DeLeo (guitar) and Eric Kretz (drums) have explained their decision to file a lawsuit against their former lead singer Scott Weiland and announce LINKIN PARK's Chester Bennington as their new vocalist.

STP made a surprise appearance on May 18 at a Los Angeles-area radio festival and debuted Bennington on vocals, playing six old songs while also premiering a new single, "Out Of Time".

In a statement posted Thursday night (May 30) on the official STONE TEMPLE PILOTS web site, the DeLeo brothers and Kretz write: "You may have read we recently filed suit against our former singer, Scott Weiland. We wanted to clarify a few things:

"Our purpose in taking this action is not to hurt Scott. We want to move forward productively, and Scott's choices and actions have prevented us from doing that.

"We were in the process of putting our 20th anniversary tour together to celebrate the release of our first album, 'Core'. The plan was for a big tour where we'd perform the album in its entirety, along with some other favorite STP songs. So, you might imagine our shock and disappointment when, without any notice, we learned that Scott had seized this tour for himself as his solo tour, and decided to do exactly what we as a group had planned. We found out about it the same way you did — we saw an ad for it.

"Without getting into legal details, the band has a binding agreement that clearly states what each of us can and cannot do outside of STP. Unfortunately many of the decisions Scott made violate this agreement, have been harmful to the band, and prevented us from moving forward.

"When our requests to Scott and his representatives that they abide by the agreement were ignored, we finally had enough. So now, we've made our choice. It was beyond time we made some new music, which was impossible in the dysfunctional environment we were in. We've lived in it long enough and have decided to move forward with STP.

"We wish Scott well.

"We're really excited about the new music we've been making with Chester, including the song we just released, 'Out Of Time'.

"We love this band and respect everything it means to you. We want to always give you our best and the choice we made is completely in that spirit."

In an interview with AZCentral published earlier this week, Weiland said, "Is that how I want to see STP now? Not at all. Not the band that I started. Not the band that I named. Not the band that when I was in Huntington Beach, took a shot and called Robert DeLeo at his apartment, doing nothing in music, living with his girlfriend, and said, 'Hey man, would you like to do a band?'"

Asked where things stand with him and his former bandmates, Weiland replied, "I don't really think about it a lot. I think about how disrespectful they are, sometimes, in between a sip of coffee and a hit of my cigarette. I think about how selfish they are and how much it blows me away that after two times of trying this, they still think they have any opportunity of doing it without me."

Weiland said that he and the rest of the band disagreed over how to handle their career, explaining, "I said, 'Look, we need to take a break. We need to make an album. We've been playing the same (expletive) set for four years, without a change. We've been watching ourselves go from playing 20,000-seat arenas to country fairs and 2,000-seat casinos.'"

He continued, "They had different management. Their managers, who are just basically booking agents, to put it lightly, they have no problem with STP and its legacy being destroyed . . . So I wouldn't (expletive) do it. And they can't do it without me . . . they've already done two bands (TALK SHOW and ARMY OF ANYONE) and failed."

Weiland said that the group was supposed to play the entire "Core" album on a 20th anniversary tour, in conjunction with a boxed set and a new hits collection, but that guitarist Dean DeLeo scuttled those plans.

Weiland himself is on a club and theater tour that brings him to Scottsdale, Arizona on Friday (May 31).

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